Did you hear the news? General Motors has decided to discontinue making Hummers after they failed to sell the brand to a Chinese heavy equipment maker. I consider this a huge win for the environment and the future of the car industry in general. GM said that they will still honor current Hummer warranties and that they will still consider last-minute bids for the brand.

Since gas prices peaked above $4 recently, the sale of Hummers across the United States has significantly declined. And by declined, I mean a 85% decline in sales in the past year!

Wow! It's hard to believe that GM sold 71,524 Hummers in 2006. They were certainly a characteristic site in my hometown during those years, and the worst part was that I didn't see a full one once. I always felt that those not engaged in military operations could partially justify driving a Hummer if it was full of kids, but more often than not, it held only a driver. I remember a man living in Boston who used to leave fake, environmental offender tickets on the hoods of Hummers. It was a bit obnoxious, but it seems most in the US have come around to his perspective. Because Hummer will likely cease to be a brand, and because it always needed a little downsizing, I have decided to no long capitalize the H. With that, I bid farewell to hummer!

Obviously some in the auto industry will be negatively impacted with this, and I am sorry for that. Had the US auto industry innovated sooner, I believe that hummer would be making a more graceful departure.

Good riddance! The Hummer is the epitome of the impractical car. It's heavy, it's huge, and it's impossible to park. The idea that any of these Hummers would actually be used off-road anywhere was ridiculous in the first place. (Perhaps there's one out there somewhere?)

I think what partially contributed to its decline was the environmental stigma. The Hummer is easy to spot and symbolizes wastefulness and excess to many environmentalists. What I find interesting, however, is that there are still plenty of cars with worse mpg that are also never taken off-road. So why is the Hummer the only one that has left production?

The H3 averaged around 16 mpg. Sure, it's bad, but it's comparable or better to the city milage for the Nissan Titan 4WD pickup (12 mpg), the Mercedez Benz ML 63 AMG SUV (11 mpg), or the Chevrolet Express 1500 (13 mpg). According to fueleconomy.gov, these are actually the least fuel-efficient cars on the road. Unlike the Hummer, they're not stigmatized. They have perfected the art of blending in with some of the most fuel efficient cars, like the Ford Escape Hybrid SUV or the Mazda Tribute Hybrid SUV, both at 34 mpg.

You make a good point that there are other cars as bad or worse than the Hummer, but the public never seemed to turn on the them the way they did the Hummer. It really did come to symbolize wastefulness, and I think it had a brash, I'll-drive-whatever-I-want quality in its later years.

Planet Green just created a list of the top five gas-guzzling vehicles. The recently extinct Hummer tops the list at number one, but there were a few I was surprised to see, including a hybrid! It's a good list because three of the five choices are not of massive SUVs, and are instead cars that might be overlooked.

At the top of the list is the Lincoln Continental Mark V. Its mpg under full acceleration was 3.5 miles-per-gallon, while its best was 7 miles-per-gallon- enough to embarrass the Hummer. Thankfully, they stopped manufacturing this car in 1979.